A short trip to Gosford
Table of Contents
With the New Year’s break, we had a free day and wanted to do something. Jo suggested we head to Gosford and check out the town. So we did.
About Gosford and Getting There. #
Gosford is a coastal city in New South Wales, Australia. It is located about 90 km north of Sydney. Gosford is the central business district of the Central Coast region and is the third largest urban area in NSW after Sydney and Newcastle.
Gosford is well connected to Sydney - both via road (on the M1 Pacific Motorway) and public transport (via the Central Coast line of the NSW Trains). We took the train from Sydney to Gosford. Getting to Gosford from North Sydney was a breeze - we walked over to Victoria Cross Metro station, took the Metro to Epping and then switched over to the Central Coast line of the NSW Train. The end-to-end train journey took about 1 hour and 15 minutes and was quite smooth. Over at Epping, we got to ride on the new Mariyung fleet of trains. The new Mariyung fleet has a nicer interior, more spacious two-by-two seating with arm rests and tray tables, charging ports and plug points as well as dedicated space for luggage. The one disadvantage of the Mariyung fleet, however, is that the seats cannot be flipped over to change the orientation to the direction of travel. This is a cool thing that is especially useful for people like me who have motion sickness and prefer not to sit against the direction of travel. I don’t know why this was dropped, but here we are.
Exploring Gosford #
Once we reached Gosford station, we walked out to the nearby bus stop. We didn’t plan to spend a lot of time - Jo wanted to check out the Gosford Regional Gallery, and thus we took the bus there. The Regional Gallery had an exhibit of the Archibald Prize 2025. The Archibald Prize is an Australian portrait painting prize. We spent a good hour or so over here, looking at and marvelling at the various art pieces.
Attached to the Gosford Regional Gallery is Edogawa Commemorative Garden - a small garden gifted by Gosford’s sister city of Edogawa. The Garden features many traditional Japanese elements including a koi pond, a traditional Japanese teahouse, and various benches. The koi pond also has a lot of ducks, and you can purchase food to feed the fish. The garden doesn’t allow for picnics, so we just walked around and enjoyed the garden.
By now, it was lunchtime and we were getting hungry. Jo had found a brewery not too far away from the Gosford Regional Gallery, so we took a bus there. The brewery was called “Bay Road Brewing”. A microbrewery, taproom, and beer garden all in one place - the brewery had a great selection of beer on tap. While it doesn’t have a kitchen, there’s a small food truck on site that you can get food from. With 16 different brews available on tap, we were truly spoilt for choice. I ordered a Mango Fizz for myself, while Jo ordered a Berried Treasure. The Mango Fizz was among the best beers I’ve had to date. The Berried Treasure was not as good as the Mango Fizz, but it was still a good beer. For food, we ordered the cauliflower bites and fish tacos, both of which were delicious. The cauliflower bites were so good, we ended up ordering a second round. Jo wanted to try another beer, so we went with Gossy Good Times which was pretty good as well. Overall, Bay Road Brewing was a great experience and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there.
With this, we decided to head back home. While walking back to the train station, Jo came across a used bookstore, so we spent some more time there. They also had a good assortment of records, but the prices were a bit high, so we decided not to get any. Jo bought a couple of books for herself.
The return journey was pretty uneventful - we missed the train by a minute and the next train wasn’t for another half hour, so we just chilled in the station till the train arrived. We quite enjoyed the small trip to Gosford and look forward to visiting again soon.